Katsucon 2024 Convention Report - New Leadership Needed?
/American Way, one of many attractions at the National Harbor area
I only recently realized that I still haven’t done a convention report for Katsucon in the post-COVID era. Maybe there’s a reason for that. People have different ways to enjoy themselves at a convention and at the end of the day a convention is what you make of it. However, there is definitely a feeling that Katsucon simply isn’t what it used to be.
This past weekend from February 16-18, 2024 marked the 14th year that Katsucon has put on a show at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in National Harbor, Maryland. This is significant because with that length of time the Katsucon staff has the experience to know and be familiar with the venue. At least, they SHOULD know the venue. Whether it’s planning the panel schedule, organizing guests, managing lines and foot traffic, or just generally operating things in a smooth manner, the folks running the show should be experienced enough to avoid the common pitfalls and growing pains of an organization trying to put on a con at a new and unfamiliar venue.
Things were not looking good considering that Katsucon didn’t make their first guest announcement until a month or two before the con. They were still announcing guests the week of the convention and the schedule wasn’t even completed until the day of. Speaking of the schedule, anyone who tried to access the Guidebook app over the weekend surely would have noticed that the schedule was being updated a lot. Like, constantly a lot. Panels were either being shuffled around or cancelled at an alarming rate. Heck, some panels for the guests didn’t even get scheduled until the day of. To say that programming in general was a mess is a colossal understatement.
Then there’s the lines. Lines at a convention are nothing new of course, but the staff at Katsucon had no plans whatsoever on how to manage them. There was no designated areas to line up for panels, there were times where staff were literally directing the lines to crisscross each other, and there was just a general lack of preparation or awareness on how lines are formed organically by the attendees. Again, if this was a new venue then it might be excusable to a certain degree, but this is not the case here. Katsucon has been at the Gaylord long enough that they should be familiar with these patterns and be able to plan accordingly. Another point to make is that this year there were hardly any markings or signs at all to indicate where the cosplay photoshoot areas are located. Veterans of the convention might not have needed such signage, but newcomers certainly were otherwise confused as to where they were located or what the boundaries of the organized photoshoot gatherings were.
Now, I will give credit where credit is due. This marked the first year that Katsucon has offered a badge mailing option after years of pleading by the attendees. In years past, pickup lines at Registration has always been a major test of patience as it would take anywhere from 1-3 hours to get your badge. However, as succinctly illustrated by the picture below taken during Thursday badge pickup, the lines were practically non-existent. For subsequent days like Friday and Saturday, I think the only reason why there were even modest lines at Registration was due to the fact that they combined the lines for badge pickup and 18+ wristband pickups into a single line.
Okay that’s enough praise, now back to gripes. Along the same train of thought about the con being disorganized, they also did not make good use of available space. Case in point, the Artist Alley was extremely crowded but the Registration hall had become an enormous empty space due to most attendees having their badge mailed to them. The location of Artist Alley being right next to the Merchant Hall also led to confusion as to where the lines were going into their respective rooms. What Katsucon needs to do is to combine the current Artist Alley room and the room used for Registration and make it one big Artist Alley while also moving the entrance to Artist Alley all the way to the end of the hallway in order to eliminate the line confusion and to also help declutter the congestion at the bottom of the escalator. The Registration itself could easily be moved to a smaller room.
There were some other minor gripes that I had throughout the weekend, one of which being the lack of Katsucon merchandise on sale. Someone on Facebook had mentioned that a staffer told them that they didn’t have any merchandise this year due to lack of volunteers to run it. Which kind of seems like a stretch considering the number of bored Katsucon staff there were sitting idly near the entrance of the Merchants Hall. Another thing worthy of being mentioned is something that occurred during the cosplay Masquerade contest. Throughout the event there were a few entrants that were no-shows and yet during the awards ceremony one of the no-shows actually won a craftsmanship award. This means that either favoritism is in play or that judging is made solely during rehearsals and not during the actual contest and that really should not be the case. Finally, by all accounts this year’s Opening and Closing Ceremonies were pretty much a waste of everyone’s time. During Opening Ceremonies they only had a handful of guests to actually show up to introduce themselves and was over before you knew it. While I didn’t go to the Closing Ceremonies, based on feedback on Facebook it seemed like it wasn’t any better.
This year was by no means a failure, especially in the attendance department. Some unofficial numbers floating around were putting this year’s attendance in the 22K-23K range which could make this one of the largest if not the largest Katsucon ever. It certainly felt that way, especially with the long lines to get into either the Merchants Hall or Artist Alley which somehow even persisted until Sunday when the con is usually at its slowest. At the end of the day, I strongly feel that Katsucon needs a shakeup of their leadership or management and I really don’t say that lightly. There’s only so much that you can blame on there being a lack of volunteers. Much of the problems that occurred this year was due to pure incompetence, plain and simple.
Check out my Facebook photography page where I posted my cosplay photoshoot photos from the Fate series, Persona series, Honkai Star Rail, and Studio Ghibli shoots.
Check out my YouTube channel where I posted my video recordings of the voice actor Q&A panel and also the full cosplay Masquerade and Fashion Show event.